Paperback 853: Anna Becker / Max White (Bantam 830)

Paperback 853: Bantam 830 (1st ptg, 1950)

Title: Anna Becker
Author: Max White
Cover artist: Uncredited

Estimated value: $8-12

Donation to the collection from The Second Reader Bookshop (Buffalo, NY)


Best things about this cover:

• Who can forget Anna Becker's great novel, "Max White"? Or vice versa, I forget.
• This cover raises one (and only one) very important question: Where Can I Get That Lamp!?
• Anna had vowed to protect the Jesus Chair at all costs! ALL COSTS!
• Ew, what is he doing with his right thumb?
• Ew, "torn between fright and desire" is rapist talk, man. "She was shaking and resisting, but … ya know." Gross.

Best things about this back cover:

• So basically it's an exposé of the sexy librarian.
• A "FRANK" exposé! Hell yeah, "frank"!
• Sometimes I think paperbacks came to exist because hardback dust jacket cover art was just So Bad.

Page 123~

So when Harrison said he liked Anna better now, she was not prepared to see what he meant.

I understand, Anna. We all understand. P.S. run.

~RP

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Paperback 785: O'Mara / Laurence Greene

Paperback 785: Lion 182 (1st ptg, 1953)

Title: O'Mara
Author: Laurence Greene
Cover artist: Uncredited

Yours for: $12


Best things about this cover:

• Drunk guy remembers that one time he was really drunk.
• It is my life's ambition to be a swaggering hellhound. 
• Well that's either "fear hand" or "remembering-breast-feel hand." For womankind's sake, I'm gonna go with "fear hand."
• Any sane cover artist would've shrunk Tipsy McBowtie and blown up the languorous becouched redhead.

Best things about this back cover:

• Fred T. Marsh knows from "unlaydownable." Just ask the ladies.
• Least shocking tagline of all time: "O'MARA WAS A MAN"
• "He was enormous with a woman" — but only with a woman. In the locker room: puny. Hashtag magicpenis.
• FRANK (ly brutal)!!!!! Oh, I've missed you, "frank." It's been a while.

Page 123~

Living in New York through the wettest Prohibition years, she had come to think of intoxication as a generally droll state.

That needs to be a caption underneath a picture of a flapper on the wall of some New York bar. Like, yesterday. Make it happen, NYC!

~RP

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Paperback 661: The Cinnamon Murder / Frances Crane (Bantam 130)

Paperback 661: Bantam 130 (1st ptg, 1947)

Title: The Cinnamon Murder
Author: Frances Crane
Cover artist: Gillen

Yours for: $12


Best things about this cover:

• Nooo! Not Cinnamon! She was our best pole dancer!
• The space priestess kneeled to anoint the body—as The Hat commanded.
• Warren Beatty in "Dick Tracy" called ... yeah, he's gonna need his jacket back.
• Seriously, unless she's going to be hiding among taxis later, that dress is a bit much.

Best things about this back cover:

• HA ha. The hat! — at least I think that's what that drawing by the "M" depicts; unless it's a very knobby hand holding a very stout wine glass. 
• "The Pat Abbotts" sounds like a '50s folk music outfit.
• "Her best John Frederics' hat"! O man, the hat is a character. There's a niche market: hat crime. It's like hate crime, only with a short 'a'.
• I haven't read this, but I'm imagining a very low-rent Nick & Nora. And instead of Asta—a hat.

Page 123~

Mr. Couch's blue eyes rested on me and then, looking back at Patrick he said, "I'm afraid I'm being pretty frank."

Oh, sweet, sweet 'frank.' I've missed you.

~RP

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Paperback 636: You Can't See Around Corners / Jon Cleary (Popular Library 497)

Paperback 636: Popular Library 497 (1st ptg, 1953)

Title: You Can't See Around Corners
Author: Jon Cleary
Cover artist: Uncredited

Yours for: $16


Best things about this cover:

• Furious that Steve doubted her ability to see around corners, Beverly grabbed Steve's tie and then plunged her left hand into the back of his skull.
• I'm assuming that's Frankie McCoy back there on the park bench, 'cause I have a hard time seeing this awkward earnest pinhead as a "hoodlum." Looks more like a teaching assistant.
• I am a big fan of her dress, and of the idea that she is about to throw him to the ground, Judo-style.

Best things about this back cover:

• Double Fear Hand!
• Why did he give his money to horses? They're notoriously bad investors and lack opposable thumbs with which to hold money.
• It's like that dude's having a hard time deciding who to shiv: the giant leprechaun or the blue-haired 8th-grader.

Page 123~

She faced him and he got a good look at her. He was glad he had come over: she had not spoken, had not accepted him, yet he was already seeing beyond the dance hall, seeing what might come later, tasting her potentialities. She was blonde but Nature had been aided; her eyes were frank and with long lashes, the best feature in her round, slightly plump face; she was tall and big and high-breasted, her body alive and strong, earthily sexual in the tight green dress. The night should be interesting.

First, "frank"!

Second, if you ever want to kill a mood, or add a creepy vibe to any situation, just use the phrase "tasting her potentialities."

~RP

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Paperback 624: Men Working / John Faulkner (Bantam 1023)

Paperback 624: Bantam 1023 (1st ptg, 1952)

Title: Men Working
Author: John Faulkner
Cover artist: Harry Schaare

Yours for: $16


Best things about this cover:

• After "The Wizard of Oz," Bert Lahr fell on hard times.
• Apparently the word "Working" has undergone a major redefinition.
• "You want my hat? 'Cause I ain't gots no use fer it no more. Here. You take it."
• John Faulkner continues to plow his little corner of the fictional world—Slovenly Sexpots and the Yokels Who Gawk at Them.
• Guess the ink was wet at some point. I'm never seen title-streaking like that before.
• Best part about this cover: Yellow. And Red. Even in that shapeless dress, she explodes off the page.
• "Blunt": "Frank"'s ugly cousin.

Best things about this back cover:

• Oh yeah. Blunt Frankness! That's the stuff.
• "We're under attack from critical applause. The last salvo hit Jerry. Jerry? You OK? JERRY!?"
• In case you missed it the first time: blunt frankness. None of that round-about, elliptical, evasive frankness for John Faulkner. Nosiree.

Page 123~

"Good God," said the Board of Health again. Then, "Do you mind if we look at your toilet room?"

~RP

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Paperback 590: Morning, Winter, and Night / John Nairne Michaelson (Berkley Books G-166)

Paperback 590: Berkley Books G-166 (1st ptg, 1958)

Title: Morning, Winter, and Night
Author: John Nairne Michaelson
Cover artist: Uncredited

Yours for: $15


Best things about this cover:

• Peter was never that good at vampiring. "Less sniffing, more biting," his mother always said. But Peter was different.
• It's the story of two young lovers, trapped in a magical aging rain that grays your hair but good.
• It's not just frank. It's absolutely frank. 24-karat frank. 99 44/00% pure frank. The frank standard.

Best things about this back cover:

• Correction: *utterly* frank. We apologize for any confusion our front cover copy may have caused.
• Just to be clear: great frankness. OK? OK.
• This sounds like one long story of fumbling with straps and premature ejaculation.

Page 123~

"She'll get well now, I think. It's been a near thing."

"I'll get the milk pails."

I'm just gonna leave that there.

~RP

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Paperback 542: A Many-Splendored Thing / Han Suyin (Signet D1183)

Paperback 542: Signet D1183 (2nd ptg, 1955)

Title: A Many-Splendored Thing
Author: Han Suyin
Cover artist: Stanley Zuckerberg

Yours for: $8


Best things about this cover:

• "Frankness"! It's a worldwide phenomenon!
• Jerry begged Suyin for a rematch: "Best two out of three! Come on, please! Oh man, the guys in my arm-wrestling club are never going to let me live this down..."
• Can you splendor (?) other things besides love? Sorrow? Boredom? Pork?
• I am having trouble thinking of clever things to say because I can't get the first verse of this song out of my head:

And the back cover ...

Best things about this back cover: 

•  "Flemish"! Well there's a word you don't see much any more. The Flemish are the Dutch-speaking inhabitants of northern Belgium. They had some success with painting and money-lending back the day (the day being "the Middle Ages and Renaissance") 
• Ah, the good old days, when interracial love was a matter that required delicacy, understanding, and, above all ... Frankness. 
• It's telling that the lady on the cover is way more hyper-Orientalized than the photo of the actual woman here. The Asian signifiers / stereotypes on the cover must run to over half a dozen. If there's one things paperback buyers like more than frankness, it's Exotic Frankness. 

 Page 123~ 

Up these steps came the people I had always known. Not small Cantonese with light bones and clean faces, but squat, ugly people with flattened faces and heavy peasant legs, the varicose veins standing out in twisted knots like a brood of snakes. Men and women, dirty and poor. Nearly every one had a physical defect of some kind or other: harelip, a finger missing, deformed chests; and on all those naked coolie shoulders one could see the large round lumps raised by the pressure of the bamboo pole. 

 "Take me back to the small Cantonese with light bones and clean faces this instant!" I snapped at my rickshaw driver. 

 ~RP 

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Paperback 538: Nightmare Alley / William Lindsay Gresham (Signet 1326)

Paperback 538: Signet 1326 (4th ptg, 1956)

Title: Nightmare Alley
Author: William Lindsay Gresham
Cover artist: James Avati

Yours for: $21



Best things about this cover:

• A noir classic. Early editions (Signets, like this one) are pretty rare. New York Review of Books reissued this book a couple years ago.
• "Nightmare Alley, or The Carny's Ennui"
• "I'm so ashamed that Eddie Munster has to see me in this get-up."
• Not just "frank"—"Brutally Frank!" This book is so frank, it hurts my eyeballs.
• No lie, I love her outfit. Pants could be a little lower-waisted, but the bra is a total win.

Best things about this back cover:

Ooh, the rarely seen "Double Frank" paperback. Nice. Whoa, triple ... though that SF Chronicle quote is really just a callback of the front cover copy.

William Lindsay Gresham is not happy with how this photo session is going.

"Magician."

Page 123~

Under that brilliant stare she began to simper and found it difficult to control her hands.

This explains why she's looking away from him and anchoring her hands on the edge of the, let's say, dunk tank.

~RP

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Paperback 522: Hope of Heaven / John O'Hara (Avon 258)

Paperback 522: Avon 258 (1st thus, 1950)

Title: Hope of Heaven
Author: John O'Hara
Cover artist: Uncredited

Yours for: $10

Best things about this cover:

• She's stuck somewhere between sexy strip-tease and "I need help with my coat jackass why are you just standing there staring?"
• It's a shame she's caught in this awkward in-between state, because if she'd just put the jacket back on and turn around, I bet she'd look stunning. Also, if she just took it off, probably same.
• She is lit *beautifully*; gives her a fantastic angelic/demonic quality (the deep red backdrop helps with the "demonic" part). 
• Dude's hair is shiny.

Best things about this back cover:

• I love DON MILLER so much right now. I want to see him in a film noir right now.
• I kind of want someone to tell naive me what it means that James Malloy "still wondered whether Karen had dimples on her knees," and then again I kind of like just using my imagination.
• "Frankness!" O man, I've missed "frank"—feels like it's been a while.

Page 123~

   "I'll give you the address of my agent. If you get in a bad jam, I mean you're badly on the nut or something like that, you write me care of this guy, and I'll let you have some more. On one condition."
   "That I never bother Peggy. I know. And thanks for the offer, but I'll never bother you, either. I don't think I will. If I do, don't send me any money. It'll only go for booze. That's what this is going for."
   He had half a load on now, but was carrying it well.

Is this DON MILLER? God I love this guy. "It'll only go for booze." Nosce te ipsum, Don Miller!

~RP

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P.S. Page 120 has this gem, of special relevance to me and my geographical situationality:

"But by that time I didn't give a God damn. I was one of those fellows, give a dog a bad name, and by that time I was living off a whore in Binghamton, New York." [this last phrase is underlined in pen–the only such phrase in the whole book]

Paperback 482: Sam / Lonnie Coleman (Pyramid G479)

Paperback 482: Pyramid G479 (1st ptg, 1960)

Title: Sam
Author: Lonnie Coleman
Cover artist: Uncredited

Yours for: $35

Best things about this cover:

• "Frank"! "Twilight world"! I do love my vintage paperback buzzwords.
• The giant "S" stands for "Super Sexy"
• Wow, Sam looks like he's really into ... Sam.
• QueerSam is about the most fabulous thing I've seen on a vintage paperback cover. His languid pose, his unbuttoned / flip-collared shirt, his hairless chest, his tight-as-hell red pants ... the way he is coming on to his buttondowned self, the way that he lives inside a tear in the space/time continuum ... all amazing.
• The New York Herald Tribune is testing out its Review-Bot 3000, now with patented "hyper-adjective mode"

Best things about this back cover:

• Unashamed homosexual!
• "Normal," HA ha.
• Oh, the gays and their "furtive wanderings" and inevitable chiropractic "adjustments"

Page 123~

His maleness had been stated; her susceptibility was understood by both of them.

"This is my maleness ... alright, let's do this!"

~RP

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Paperback 467: Women's Barracks / Tereska Torres (Gold Medal 132)

Paperback 467: Gold Medal 132 (PBO, 1950)

Title: Women's Barracks
Author: Tereska Torres
Cover artist: Barye Phillips

Yours for: $20

Best things about this cover:

• Ah, the standard military-issue pink bra. Classic.
• Hell yeah "FRANK!"
• This book is pretty famous. Per wikipedia: "The first paperback to address a lesbian relationship was published as early as 1950 with Women's Barracks by Tereska Torres, published by Gold Medal Books. The story was fictionalized account of Torres' experiences in the Free French Forces in London during World War II. Women's Barracks sold 4 million copies and was selected in 1952 to become an example of how paperback books were promoting moral degeneracy, by the House Select Committee on Current Pornographic Materials."
• I'm kind of in love with the blonde in the dead center background. She looks tough as hell. Doesn't even bother taking the cigarette out of her mouth to put her clothes on. No time for googly eyes in the locker room — those Krauts aren't going to kill themselves, ladies!
• I also love the lady in uniform, sizing up her prey: "I'm gonna eat you like an after-dinner mint, sweetheart."

Best things about this back cover:

• "Where are the *normal* emotional outlets? All I see are these weird European jobs. Anybody got a converter?"
• "Revealment" is a real word, but it still hurts.

Page 123~

Mickey tried to give the men the eye, as though to reassure them that she was a real woman; but Petit had installed herself directly in front of us, at a little table, so there could be no side flirtation.

"Eyes front, bitches!"

~RP

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Paperback 466: Spring Fire / Vin Packer (Gold Medal 222)

Paperback 466: Gold Medal 222 (PBO, 1952)

Title: Spring Fire
Author: Vin Packer (aka Marijane Meaker)
Cover artist: Barye Phillips

Yours for: [not for sale]

Best things about this cover:

• I wish the cover depicted whatever that blonde is looking at, because it must be Amazing (unlike this cover).
• "Frank(ly)!"
• Brunette: "Why do you always leave your nylons on the floor?" Blonde: "Whoa ... look at that pigeon on the windowsill. He looks just like James Mason ..."
• I like how this book treads Very Very Lightly on the whole lesbian issue. Art director: "Two women ... in a room together ... sitting on what is probably a bed ... that's far enough, boys. Make their negligees look like party dresses, have them look away from each other, and leave the door ajar so we can always say they're just two girls waiting for their dates to arrive. Their big, male dates."
• That is one imposing head of blond hair. It appears to be giving off solar flares.

Best things about this back cover:

• "A girl called Mitch"—how is that not the title?!
• "... a theme too important to keep from the light ... but not important enough to be mentioned directly on this cover." 
• "Vin Packer" is another alias of Marijane Meaker. You may remember her from such classics as "Take a Lesbian to Lunch" (which she wrote as "Ann Aldrich"). "Vin Packer" is probably my favorite paperback author name. If Rex Parker had an alias, it would be Vin Packer.
• The very first thing my eyes lit on when I opened the book: "Dripping and curious, Mitch hovered in a wide towel as she took the call in the booth outside the bathroom." This made me change my mind about what the book's title should be...

I'm replacing Page 123 today with Page 136. Too good to pass up:

The ticking of the tin clock on the dresser sounded frantic and Mitch made the ticks come in three beats in her mind—Les-bi-an, Les-bi-an, tick-tick-tick.

Yet another great potential title that was passed up. And now clocks will never sound the same again.

Bonus: Page 126~

It was different when I could say it wasn't this way, that I was bisexual and all that rot. Bisexual—that's sort of like succotash, isn't it? Only this succotash hasn't got any corn in it. It's straight beans!

Without question, the single greatest metaphor in literary history.

~RP

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Paperback 463: Mr. Madam: Confessions of a Male Madam / Kenneth Marlowe (Paperback Library 55-857)

Paperback 463: Paperback Library 55-857 (1st ptg, 1965)

Title: Mr. Madam: Confessions of a Male Madam
Author: Kenneth Marlowe
Cover artist: Uncredited

Yours for: $9

Best things about this cover:

• Oh good, an Adult Autobiography. I always hate it when children try to write autobiography. Grow up first, you self-involved whiners!
• How can a book with this subject matter and this title have a cover this terrible. I mean, consider some other covers (which I just found, while trolling the internet):

[Hairdresser of the stars!? Why is this info not on my paperback!?]

• Kenneth Marlowe was also a female impersonator. More pics:

 

And now the back cover:

Best things about this back cover:

• Ugh. A chalkboard drawing? Is this supposed to be a "twilight man?"
• Not even the word "frank" to appease me. I hate this book (cover). [I just opened the book and the very first phrase on the very first page is "Uncompromisingly frank," so I feel a little better]

Page 123~

"You all try to help 'Frenchy' get dates, girls. Oh, be sure to remember to call him 'Frenchy.' If you get a date with a John, tell him that for five bucks extra you can have Frenchy sent in. Tell the trick, 'Let Frenchy come in and work on me. It makes me go wild!' That'll work the John up. Or, for $10 he'll work both you and the John. Well, I don't have to tell most of you how to manage it. Use your imaginations. Frenchy will, of course, be working all the exhibitions."

To its credit, this book does get pretty dang 'frank' (esp. by 1965 standards). Why it's not called "FRENCHY!"—with accompanying super-campy picture—I just don't understand.

~RP

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